


Absolve me of my sin

by Ghastly_lemons



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Torture, Oneshot, Post-War, asking for help, implied suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 06:28:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29220987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ghastly_lemons/pseuds/Ghastly_lemons
Summary: When Hermione Granger had received the innocuous seeming letter by owl post that morning over breakfast her heart had sunk like a stone into the Black Lake as she read the rushed cursive scrawled across the small scrap of neatly folded parchment.I can’t go on anymore. Please help me. I’ll be in the old charms classroom down the hall from the Room of Requirement after curfew tonight. Please don’t tell anyone else.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Comments: 13
Kudos: 64





	Absolve me of my sin

When Hermione Granger had received the innocuous seeming letter by owl post that morning over breakfast her heart had sunk like a stone into the Black Lake as she read the rushed cursive scrawled across the small scrap of neatly folded parchment.

_I can’t go on anymore. Please help me. I’ll be in the old charms classroom down the hall from the Room of Requirement after curfew tonight. Please don’t tell anyone else._

There was no signature or any way to tell who had sent it. Worse, the handwriting was so rushed she couldn’t recognise it at all. She’d spent the better part of the morning trying to analyse it, casting charms and detection spells on it as she ignored Professor Binns as he droned on about a war long past. She’d even taken it out into the weak early March sunshine to try and see if there were any more mundane way to hide secrets used on it. But nothing had turned up and the parchment retained any secrets it might have held beyond the two hastily scrawled lines begging for her help and her name on the envelope.

Eventually she had to turn her mind to the question of whether it may be a trap. For all that Voldemort had fallen and his Death Eaters were mostly in prison, the sentiments stirred up by the war were in some ways slower to fade. She might not have to worry about being openly called a Mudblood in the halls of Hogwarts, but there were any number of students who had parents imprisoned or dead that fought on the other side of the war to her and surely resented her victory. The stares they sent her were certainly icy enough.

She spent the afternoon pretending to take notes in charms and concentrating just enough in potions that she didn’t blow up her cauldron, all the while turning the problem of the note over in her mind. Her gut told her it was genuine, but her head wasn’t so sure.

But she couldn’t just ignore a plea for help. Someone might be struggling hard enough to be thinking about ending it, and Hermione couldn’t let them suffer. The war had already claimed too many lives, and if she could save another victim she would.

Which is how she found herself dropping her Disillusionment charm as she pushed open the door of the seventh floor classroom at ten minutes past curfew with her wand gripped tightly in her hand in case there was an ambush.

Just about the last person she’d expected to find sitting quietly at one of the desks lit only by the soft moonlight through the window was Draco Malfoy.

He’d come back to redo his seventh year like she had, but unlike her he hadn’t had a choice. The Wizengamot had declared it part of his probation and he had to graduate with at least Exceeds Expectations in all his subjects, including a condensed Muggle Studies course, or go back on trial and possibly to Azkaban like his father. Since returning he’d done nothing but keep his head down, drifting through the halls under notice-me-not charms and studying as much as Hermione did, avoiding meals and looking even more stressed than sixth year. The once proud child he’d been had bowed and broken under the weight of the war, and a small part of Hermione pitied him. An even smaller part had been trying to figure out how to help him.

“Malfoy? Wha-“ Hermione sucked in a horrified breath, for laid out carefully on the table in front of Malfoy, between his elbows as he laced his fingers in front of his chin, was a sharp silver dagger with a slender blade and wire-wrapped hilt.

“I didn’t think you’d come.” Malfoy’s voice is soft and gravelly, like he doesn’t use it much.

Hermione edged into the room, letting the door shut quietly behind her. “Draco, are you-“ She looked at his steely eyes as they unflinchingly stared at the blade in front of him and realised that asking if he was okay was idiotic. “What do you need?”

Malfoy doesn’t take his eyes off the knife. “To repent.”

Hermione took another step closer. “Draco, you apologised already remember? You sent me a letter and I replied.” His letter had listed every transgression he could ever remember committing against her and gone on to detail just how badly he regretted every single one. He’d concluded the letter with profuse apologies and assurances that he knew he would never deserve or expect her forgiveness but he wanted her to know how deeply sorry he was. Hermione’s reply had been shorter, thanking him for the care he’d put into his letter and promising him he would have her forgiveness because they had just been children and they all deserved a fresh start.

One of Malfoy’s long fingers twitched the smallest amount. “You did. But how can you just forgive me like that? I watched-“ He broke off and slammed his hands down on either side of the plain knife, making Hermione jump. “I watched you be tortured and did _nothing_.”

“There was nothing you could have done. She would have killed us both if you’d tried.” She took a half step forward to the end of the row of desks Malfoy was sitting at. “Draco, could you please give me the knife? You’re scaring me.” She tentatively reached one hand out towards him, palm up. She moved slowly so she wouldn’t spook him, he seemed to be dancing on a metaphorical knifes edge.

Malfoy stood suddenly, the chair clattering to the ground behind him. He took the knife by the blade, heedless of the way it cuts his palm, and brought himself in front of Hermione in two quick steps. “Yes.” He took her hand and pressed the hilt of the knife into it, wrapping her smaller fingers around it. “Please, take it. _Use it._ ” He begged, his rough voice cracking as he stared down at her, manic and wild.

“What do you mean?” Hermione whispers, struck nearly dumb by his desperation.

Malfoy dropped to his knees, his bleeding hand curling around her bare calf. “Mark me. My aunt carved a lie into you while I watched you bleed your perfectly red blood over my mother’s favourite rug.” He let go of her to fumble with the buttons of his school oxford, baring the pale column of his throat and his lean chest to her. “Carve the truth into me Granger. Give me retribution for my cowardice.”

Hermione stared past the heavy dagger to the broken man begging at her feet. She knew that he needed something, but she didn’t know how to save Malfoy from drowning in his own regrets. Then an idea came to her.

“You want me to mark you?” She asked, and he nodded fervently, his fine platinum hair falling across his forehead. “What do you want me to mark you with?”

Malfoy looked so relieved at her seeming compliance that it broke her heart. “Anything. Call me coward, evil, _anything_. Just please I need you to do _something_ so I stop hearing your screams.” He begged on his knees, a sinner in front of Mary crying for salvation.

Hermione reached down with her free hand and cupped his chin. “Okay, but you have to agree not to argue with me.”

Malfoy sagged like a marionette with its strings cut and turned his head to press a reverent kiss to the palm of her hand, a man reaching for the release from his horrors and finding it within his grasp. “ _Yes._ ” He breathed, the moonlight touching his hair and painting it bright silver.

Hermione used the hand on his chin to draw him up and then moved her small hand to his sternum, over his wildly beating heart, to urge him to sit on the desk behind him. “Sit down and take off your shirt.” Malfoy did it without question or complaint, dropping his crisp shirt carelessly to the side and waiting for her next move.

Hermione carefully examined him. He was too thin, not starved but too lean for his height. His ribs were present under his skin but not stark, and Hermione decided that that was the place she would begin. Carefully placing the knife out of his reach, she brought her beaded bag out of her pocket. Malfoy bit his lip, looking worried for the first time.

“Don’t worry. That’s just too bulky for what I have in mind.” She soothed, gently rubbing a thumb over his high cheekbone before going back to rummaging in the compartments of her bag until she found what she was looking for. She held the items up in front of Malfoy who regarded them curiously. “I don’t like causing pain, so much so that if you make me inflict it on you, you’d be hurting me as well. Do you understand?”

Malfoy swallowed and his face fell. “Of course, I’m so sorry. I’ll ju-“

Hermione cut him off. “But you _need_ me to do this, don’t you? Just a yes or a no.”

Malfoy stared at the small jar in her hand. “Yes.” His grey eyes flicked up to meet her brown ones. “Please.”

“Then we do it my way.” She unscrewed the lid of her ink bottle and put it in easy reach on the desk across the aisle from where he sat. “Lie down Malfoy, with the arm closest to me above your head.” She tapped her wand to the quill in her hand to cast an anti-tickling charm on it as Malfoy complied with her request. “I’m going to write on you now. It will be my words to you and I’m going to charm them onto your skin. It’s not as permanent as a tattoo, but you’ll need me to undo the charm if you ever want it off your skin. Do you understand?”

Malfoy nodded, his face serious.

Hermione gave him a small smile and dipped her favourite quill in her favourite ink. “Stay still now.”

She didn’t cast a lumos, working instead by the pale light of the moon. Where they sat in the one shaft of true light she had to be careful not to block it out with her own body as she traced the words precisely over Malfoy’s ribs as he lay still as the night on the desk. He barely breathed as she curved each line to sit between his ribs, his absolution flowing from the nib of her quill as she wordlessly cast the charm to stick each letter to him as she etched them, deep black on his fair skin.

She wrote carefully, crafting each letter as best she could in her rounded handwriting, clear and easy to read but still delicate as her pen was used to flying with speed and never dug deep. Even with her methodical approach, she finished quickly and sat on the desk that held her ink and his dagger, inspecting her work from further away before casting the final charm to bind it to his skin.

“I’m done.” Her voice was low so as not to break the peace and she conjured a mirror to hang in the air next to her as Malfoy stood from where he’d lain patiently to see what she’d gifted him. Stretched down his ribs was a poem.

_Help us to change.  
To change ourselves and to change our world.  
To know the need for it. To deal with the pain of it.  
To feel the joy of it.  
To undertake the journey without understanding the destination.  
The art of gentle revolution._

Malfoy’s lips moved slightly as he read it backwards in the mirror and then he turned to Hermione, his face both broken and hopeful.

“I couldn’t brand you with hate equal to what already stains _both_ of our arms because I don’t feel it. So I wrote something that matched how I _do_ feel.” She hopped off the desk and came to stand next to Malfoy, tilting her head to the side as she met his eyes in the mirror. “You’ve changed, Draco. For the better.”

Malfoy turned towards her and lifted his hands to either side of her face, close enough for her to feel the warmth of his palms but never touching. “You are… Indescribable. _Thank you._ ”

Hermione brought her ink stained fingers up to his hand and pressed it to her cheek with a smile. “Thank me by living up to the words.”

**Author's Note:**

> Another 'popped into my head' oneshot. This one comes courtesy of not being able to sleep because I'm a little bit sick. But at least I got a fic out of it?
> 
> The Poem is one of Michael Leunig's prayers. My parents always had his books around the house, and I always had a liking to his poetry.


End file.
